Heaven's Shadow (23 page)

NASA PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AUGUST
23, 2019

Tea and Taj had been gone only half an hour when Zack noticed that his charges were beginning to yawn. “Oh my God,” Megan said.

She was so immediately unsteady that Zack got worried. “Are you feeling faint?”

“No, just . . . tired.” She sank to the ground where she was. The girl slid close to Megan. In moments, both were, to Zack’s eyes, sound asleep. “That was very strange,” Natalia said.

“Have you ever seen a baby fall asleep?” Zack said gently, afraid he might wake them, and just as afraid he might provoke Natalia. “They go and go and go for hours, then they’re like little machines when you switch them off.” Just saying it reminded him again of Rachel. What was he going to tell her? How was he going to explain this?

“Well,” Lucas said, “they
are
only a day old.”

“I think we need a fire.” Without further discussion, Zack left Lucas to keep watch, then began to forage in the immediate vicinity. Natalia joined him—more, it seemed to Zack, to avoid being anywhere near the revived pair than because she wanted to help. “Why do you need a fire, anyway?” Natalia said. “It’s warm enough in here.”

“At the moment,” Zack said. “But we don’t know what it’s going to be like when the glowworms go dark—”

“—Assuming they do go dark.”

“Whether they do or not, fire gives light, it helps with cooking, and it provides protection.”

“You think a flaming torch is going to help you fight off that thing that killed Pogo?”

“No. But it might be a hell of a distraction. And there’s a scientific question to be explored, Dr. Yorkina.”

“The ability of the human mind to focus on the irrelevant during times of stress?”

Zack laughed. “Okay, a second scientific question, which is, can we actually build a fire inside Keanu? We’ve got oxygen, but do we have tinder?”

He stopped and waved at the new growth: spindly, leafy structures that resembled trees. At the moment they reminded him of the pathetic potted sticks that dotted the raw real estate development he had lived in at age seven.

Natalia forgot her own miseries and fears long enough to play along. “Well, even if these are wood, or something resembling cellulose, it will all be green. I can’t imagine it will burn easily.”

“There’s another reason I need a quest for fire,” he told her. “Frankly, it gives me something to do while they sleep and the rover gets here.” He stripped some of the leafy material off one of the new growths. It felt dry, but not flimsy. It also had substance.

Within minutes he had an armful. “So,” he said, as casually as he could, “what happened between you and Konstantin? Was he—?”

“It was not
he
, it was
it
. And I killed it.” She admitted her action as casually as if saying she had crossed the street.

“Mind telling me why? Did it attack you?”

“I was afraid it would.”

Zack could only nod. What were his options? Arrest her? She wasn’t even a member of his crew. “And then you ran.”

“I was in a panic.” Only now did she look at him. “I still am.”

“I guess we all are,” he said. “What about Megan and Camilla. Are they
its
?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not afraid of them.”

“I will be cautious around them, but no . . . not like Konstantin.”

“Why not?”

“Because the human Konstantin was a brute! Any replica of him was certain to be just as dangerous. Were you afraid of your wife when she was alive? Should we be in fear of that little girl? I don’t think so.” She stood, arms filled with vegetation. “We should get back now.”

Zack had no better alternative.

“I gave them water and food,” Lucas said, as soon as Zack and Natalia returned.

“Good thinking,” Zack said, kneeling to arrange his collection of Keanu kindling in the classic Boy Scout fire stack.

At any other time, Lucas would have smiled. Now he just looked embarrassed. “Even if that stuff will burn, how are you going to ignite it?”

“Well, we know there’s oxygen here, or none of us would be breathing.”

“Are you
sure
about them?” Natalia said, nodding at the sleeping undead. “That they’re breathing like us?”

Zack chose to ignore the comment, shredding the leafy stalks as best he could, creating a pile of lighter material that would, he hoped, be more receptive to flame. Then he stood up. “Now, all we need is a spark.”

“Don’t Young Pioneers rub two sticks together?” Natalia said.

Lucas chose to be supportive. “We could try to get sparks off a couple of rocks, maybe. . . .” He presented Zack with a pair of likely candidates.

Zack thanked him and took one of the rocks. “First, though—” He pulled his backpack over to the protofire and opened a valve. “A little extra O
₂
flow . . .”

Then he pulled the geological hammer from the bag on his suit. With the hammer in one hand and the rock in the other, he knelt and held them just over the kindling, in the stream of fresh oxygen flowing from his backpack.

Once, twice. “I’m not seeing a spark,” Natalia said.

“Your observation is noted,” Zack said, really wishing she would go away. The two hits had been unsatisfactory. For the first time since conceiving this procedure forty minutes ago, he began to doubt it would work.

“Let me,” Lucas said. He took the hammer and rock from Zack’s hands, got into position, and swiftly chipped a chunk of the rock away so cleanly it gave off visible sparks.

Three more swift chips, and a spark ignited the kindling.

Lucas immediately bent down to adjust the O
₂
flow as the leafy Keanu vegetation proved that it would burn, at least for now.

He sat back, looking surprised and still smug.

Zack wanted to hug him. “You are officially the World’s Greatest Astronaut.”

Did I think I was discovering an alien spacecraft? Are you
insane
? I don’t believe in
UFOs
or close encounters or anal probes. No. I just thought I’d found something big and
new . . .
ice and rock from deep space. Christ, what a stupid question.

COLIN EDGELY ON
TODAY
, NINE NETWORK, SYDNEY, 23 AUGUST 2019

“Something’s going on up there,” Brent Bynum told Harley, Shane Weldon, and Gabriel Jones.

They were gathered in the Vault again, along with a half dozen other staffers and horse-holders. There was no preliminary chat, other than several quick expressions of sympathy to Jones on his daughter’s health. The director had simply said, with uncharacteristic understatement, “She’s stable and the mission is proceeding.”

The lack of sentiment allowed Weldon, in perfect Weldon style, to say, in answer to Bynum, “No shit, Sherlock.”

He smiled sideways at Harley, who did not return the smile. While he had no fears about annoying Bynum, he also knew that a meeting ran better, which is to say faster, when the guy who called it was happy.

Bynum could not be happy, of course. None of them could. The realization that the
Venture
crew was out of direct contact with Earth and mission control for any period of time would have been a major problem in a normal mission; given the tragic and bizarre information that had already reached Houston, it was a disaster.

The only thing to do was to work it through. So Harley said, “Can you, ah, clarify that for us?”

“Yes. Excuse me.” Bynum bowed his head and clasped his hands for a moment, as if previewing his remarks. Harley wondered, given the incredible circumstances, what information could possibly be sensitive enough to justify such caution. “
Brahma
is not affected by the loss of signal.”

Weldon reacted first. “That’s impossible!”

“That was our position, too,” Bynum said, “given the rotation of Keanu and other factors.”

“What are you telling us?” Weldon said. “You can’t punch a radio signal through a NEO.”

“Correct.
Brahma
is sending a signal
around
Keanu.”

Now Harley found the energy to speak. “And just how in the hell did they manage that?”

Bynum turned toward him. The man was impressively calm and low-key. “This will be easier if I start with the image.”

On cue, one of his assistants enabled the screen at the end of the table . . . which showed a white rectangular shape trailed by a small white blob. “This is a long-distance image of
Brahma
taken yesterday from Hawaii. I believe it’s about thirteen hours before
Destiny
landed, but I’m assured that figure is irrelevant.”

Harley knew the Air Force had a satellite surveillance station in Hawaii equipped with telescopes that peered up at satellites. He also knew that it was impossible to get much of an image on a bird even at geosynchronous orbit, thirty-six thousand kilometers up. This would have been at ten times the distance. “They must have had some impressive upgrades at Maui,” he said.

“Who cares?” Harley snapped. “They dropped a satellite?”

“Correct,” Bynum said. “A microsat designed to loiter in—what do you call it?—a super-high Earth orbit—”

“That makes sense,” Weldon said. “It just hangs there on the far side of Keanu.
Brahma
can pop signals to it. Signals get relayed to Bangalore.”

“It looks bigger than a microsat,” one of the staffers said.

“That’s due to the sun and imaging,” Bynum said. “It’s apparently only a meter across.”

“Makes it hard to hit the horns,” said another man in the room. “Horns” were the antennae on the satellite itself.

Weldon was completely taken with the concept. “The satellite is only a couple of kilometers from events on Keanu. What’s trickier is getting that signal to Bangalore.”

This time a different staffer joined in. “Why worry about getting the signal to one spot on Earth? Just aim it toward commercial comsats in geo.”

Harley was already tired of this space ops chat. “People, we’re losing focus here! Forget how they did it.” He turned to Bynum. “The point is, they have comm that we don’t. And you guys intercepted it, and I bet you cracked whatever encryption they put on it.”

“Correct,” Bynum said.

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What have they learned? What have they said?”

For the first time Bynum looked uncomfortable. “Some very strange things. Apparently there are people inside Keanu.”

That bit of news silenced the Vault. “Did you say
people
? Not aliens? Not extraterrestrial life-forms?”

“No. People. Human beings . . .” Bynum trailed off and merely looked uncomfortable.

“Well,” Weldon said, “that explains where all this space zombie crap is coming from. Bangalore leaks.”

“Which means that the rest of the world is somehow cleared for Bangalore’s data,” Harley said. “Just not NASA. The people who could use it.”

“Bangalore has released nothing,” Bynum said. “The only information out there is rumor and fantasy.”

Gabriel Jones cleared his throat. “But we all know, Mr. Bynum, that in circumstances like this, where there’s smoke . . .” To Harley Jones, he looked exhausted. Well, all of them did—except Bynum, whose shirt seemed to be starched. Did anyone still do that anymore?

“Zombies? That’s a pretty strange flavor of smoke. It doesn’t even make sense. Zombies are mindless flesh-eaters, not people.” Weldon pushed his chair back from the table. He was about to walk out.

“It would be helpful if we had the raw intel,” Harley said to Bynum. “Not just your summary. Assuming anybody wants my Great Minds to go to work on this.”

Bynum blinked. His body language tipped Harley to his answer, which was, “You aren’t cleared for the raw intel.” As the others in the Vault immediately protested, Bynum held up his hands. “I’m not cleared for it, either! Sorry. Maybe Dr. Jones can make a request. I’m just the messenger.”

Now Weldon was on his feet. “Well, Mr. Bynum, you know what happens to messengers.” And he walked out.

Obviously hoping to forestall a mass exodus, Jones said, “This situation may resolve itself before any other action takes place. Where are we in our loss of signal?”

“Six hours yet,” Harley said. The number caused audible groans around the Vault.

“Then I suggest we all use this time to take stock, recharge, and be ready, because when we have comm again, we’ll have to hit the ground running.”

Harley marveled again at the way a string of empty words could motivate a group of human beings. Jones had told them nothing, yet the team in the Vault—Weldon excepted because of absence, and Harley because of habitual pessimism—rose with something like enthusiasm, ready to go forth and do battle.

Harley had to get his Home Team up to speed. When communication was reestablished with
Venture
, they were going to have to provide answers. And right now they barely understood the questions.

As he left the Vault, however, there was a JSC security guard waiting for him. “Mr. Drake? Are you responsible for Rachel Stewart?”

Keanu is a starship: how did the word get out? Impossible to say,
though some day some Ph.D. in media will be able to reconstruct it.
At the moment, the primary suspects are sources within the Bangalore
and
NASA
mission control centers. All it would take is one text
message.

HUFFINGTON POST NEWS WATCH, AUGUST
23, 2019

The fire sputtered and never reached the roaring stage, no matter how much leafy stuff they piled on it. But it gave them a bit of light, as well as a bizarre shadow against the Beehive wall . . . which turned out to be rover
Buzz
on approach.

All five of the astronauts were going without helmets now. “This troubles me,” Taj said. “We’re exposing ourselves to this environment.”

“What choice do we really have?” Zack said. “If we had to rely on our consumables, we’d be back on the surface by now. Besides, it doesn’t matter what our bodies are exposed to. Our suits are totally contaminated.
Venture
has tools for dealing with lunar dust, not Keanu’s organisms.”